The Bookshop Read online

  New books came in sets of eighteen, wrapped in thin brown paper. As she sorted them out, they fell into their own social hierarchy. The heavy luxurious country-house books, the books about Suffolk churches, the memoirs of statesmen in several volumes, took the place that was theirs by right of birth in the front window. Others, indispensable, but not aristocratic, would occupy the middle shelves. That was the place for the Books of the Car – from Austin to Wolseley – technical works on pebble-polishing, sailing, pony clubs, wild flowers and birds, local maps and guide books. Among these the popular war reminiscences, in jackets of khaki and blood-red, faced each other as rivals with bristling hostility. Back in the shadows went the Stickers, largely philosophy and poetry, which she had little hope of ever seeing the last of. The Stayers – dictionaries, reference books and so forth – would go straight to the back, with the Bibles and reward books which, it was hoped, Mrs Traill of the Primary would present to successful pupils. Last of all came the crates of Müller’s shabby remainders. A few were even second-hand. Although she had been trained never to look inside the books while at work, she opened one or two of them – old Everyman editions in faded olive boards stamped with gold. There was the elaborate endpaper which she had puzzled over when she was a little girl. A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. After some hesitation, she put it between Religion and Home Medicine.

  The right-hand wall she kept for paperbacks. At 1s. 6d. each, cheerfully coloured, brightly democratic, they crowded the shelves in well-disciplined ranks. They would have a rapid turnover and she had to approve of them; yet she could remember a world where only foreigners had been content to have their books bound in paper. The Everymans, in their shabby dignity, seemed to confront them with a look of reproach.

  In the backhouse kitchen, since there was absolutely no room for them in the shop itself, were two deep drawers set apart for the Books of the Books – the Ledger, Repeat Orders, Purchases, Sales Returns, Petty Cash. Still blank, with untouched double columns, these unloved books menaced the silent commonwealth on the shelves next door. Not much of a hand at accounts, Florence would have preferred them to remain without readers. This was weakness, and she asked Jessie Welford’s sharp niece, who worked with a firm of accountants in Lowestoft, to come over once a month for a check. ‘A little Trial Balance now and then,’ said Ivy Welford condescendingly, as though it were a tonic for the feebleminded. Her worldly wisdom, in a girl of twenty-one, was alarming, and she would need paying, of course; but both Mr Thornton and the bank manager seemed relieved when they heard that Ivy had been arranged for. Her head was well screwed-on, they said.

  4

  THE Old House Bookshop was to open next morning, but Florence did not have it in mind to hold any kind of celebration, because she was uncertain who should be asked. The frame of mind, however, is everything. Given that, one can have a very satisfactory party all by oneself. She was thinking this when the street door opened and Raven came in.

  ‘You’re often alone,’ he remarked.

  He apologized for wearing his waders, and looked round to see what kind of a job the scouts had made of the shelving.

  ‘An eighth of an inch out over there by the cupboard.’

  But she would have no fault found. Besides, now that the books were in place, well to the front (she couldn’t bear them to slide back as though defeated), any irregularities could scarcely be noticed. Like the red dress, the shelving would come to her as she wore it.

  ‘And that plastering looks unsightly,’ Raven went on. ‘You can point that out, next time you see them.’

  She did not feel confident that she would recognize any of the scouts out of uniform; but she was wrong, for Wally appeared, dressed in his school blazer and a serviceable pair of trousers from the Agricultural Outfitters, and she knew him at once.

  He had a message, he said, for Mrs Green.

  ‘Who gave it you?’ Raven asked.

  ‘Mr Brundish did, Mr Raven.’

  ‘What? He came out of Holt House and gave it to you?’

  ‘No, he just leaned a bit against the window and clicked.’

  ‘With his tongue?’

  ‘No, with his fingers.’

  ‘Then you couldn’t hear it through the window?’

  ‘No, it was more like I was aware of it.’

  ‘How did he look, then? Palish?’

  Wally seemed doubtful. ‘Palish and darkish. You can’t really say how he looks. His head’s a bit sunk down between his shoulders.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘I felt I’d have to jump to it.’

  ‘A Sea Scout should always jump to it,’ Raven replied automatically. ‘I don’t reckon to have seen him for more than a month, in spite of the fine weather, and I haven’t heard him speak for much longer. He didn’t say anything to you, did he?’

  ‘Oh yes, he cleared his throat a bit, and told me to give this to Mrs Green.’

  Wally had in his hand a white envelope bordered with black. Although she had been staring at it all this time, she took it almost with disbelief. She had never spoken to Mr Brundish. Even at the party at The Stead she had had no expectation of meeting him. It was well known that Mrs Gamart, as patroness of all that was of value in Hardborough, would have liked to count him as a friend, but since she had been at The Stead for only fifteen years and was not of Suffolk origin, her wishes had been in vain. Perhaps her presence had not been drawn to Mr Brundish’s attention. And then, of recent years he had been so much confined to his home that it was a matter of astonishment that he should know her name.

  ‘I don’t see how this can be for me.’

  It did not occur to either Raven or Wally to go away until she had opened it.

  ‘Don’t you worry about the black edges,’ Raven said. ‘He had those envelopes done it must have been in 1919, when they all came back from the first war, and I was still a nipper, and Mrs Brundish died.’

  ‘What did she die of?’

  ‘That was an odd thing, Mrs Green. She was drowned crossing the marshes.’

  Inside the envelope was one sheet of paper, also black-bordered.

  Dear Madam,

  I should like to wish you well. In my great-grandfather’s time there was a bookseller in the High Street who, I believe, knocked down one of the customers with a folio when he grew too quarrelsome. There had been some delay in the arrival of the latest instalment of a new novel – I think, Dombey and Son. From that day to this, no one has been courageous enough to sell books in Hardborough. You are doing us an honour. I should certainly visit your shop if I ever went out, but nowadays I make a point of not doing so; however, I shall be very willing to subscribe to your circulating library.

  Yours obediently,

  Edmund Brundish.

  A library! She hadn’t contemplated it, and there was nothing like enough room.

  ‘He’s evidently not satisfied with the Mobile,’ said Raven.

  The public library van came over from Flintmarket once a month. The books, from much use, had acquired a peculiar fragrance. All who cared for reading in Hardborough had read them several times.

  She accompanied Wally, who nodded acknowledgment to her thanks, to the street door. He appeared to be a general messenger. His bike was loaded with shopping, and from the handlebars, which he had screwed on upside down to look more like a racer, hung a wicker basket containing a hen.

  ‘She’s broody, Mrs Green. I’m taking her round from ours to my cousin’s half-sister’s. She wants to rear chicks.’

  Florence put her hand lightly on the slumbering mass of feathers. The old fowl was sunk into a soft tawny heap, scarcely opening her slit-like eyes. Her whole energy was absorbed in producing warmth. The basket itself throbbed with a slow and purposeful rhythm.

  ‘Thank you for bringing the note, Wally. I can see you’ve got plenty to do.’ She had brought her bag, and subscribed quietly to another brick.

&nb
sp; Raven did not leave at once. He explained that he had come in the first instance to suggest that she needed a bright youngster to give her a hand, perhaps after school.

  ‘Were you thinking of Wally?’

  ‘No, not him. He won’t be at home with books. It’s maths that attracts him. If he’d been much of a reader, he’d have taken a look at your letter on the way over here, and you could see he hadn’t done that.’

  Raven was thinking of one of the Gipping girls. He didn’t say how many of them there were, or appear to think that it mattered which one. The reputation for competence was shed upon them by their mother, Mrs Gipping. The family lived in that house between the church and the old railway station, with a fair piece of ground. Mr Gipping was a plasterer but could be glimpsed often from the rear staking peas or earthing up his potatoes. Mrs Gipping went out to work a little. She favoured Milo, on the days when Kattie was up in London, and she went regularly to Mr Brundish.

  ‘I’ll speak to her,’ Raven said. ‘She can send one of her lot down after school. That finishes at twenty-five past three.’

  He took his leave. The wet footprints of his waders looked like the track of some friendly amphibian across the floorboards, polished more than once for tomorrow’s opening. The sensation of having something organized for her was agreeable. Left to herself, she would not have had the confidence to call at Mrs Gipping’s populous house.

  Her mind went back reluctantly to the problem of the lending library. It would be a nuisance, and might even be a failure. Could Mrs Gamart, for instance, reasonably be expected to subscribe to it? Nothing more had been heard from The Stead, but Deben had given a half-reproachful, half-knowing glance as he laid out the sprats on his marble slab, which had shown her that the controversy was still alive. The more modestly she ran her business, for the first year at least, the better. But after reading Mr Brundish’s letter through again, she said aloud, ‘I will see what I can do about a library.’

  If she had thought that the poltergeist would relax its efforts after the shop had opened, she was wrong. At various times in the night, behind every screw which the scouts had driven in, there would be a delicate sharp tap, as though they were being numbered for future reference. The customers, during the day, would remark that it was very noisy at Rhoda’s next door, and that they had never heard a sewing-machine make a noise like that before. Florence would reply, conscious of telling the exact truth, that you could never tell with these old houses. She installed a cash register with a bell, a sound that will distract the attention from almost anything else.

  Her opening day had drawn only mild attention in Hardborough. There was no curiosity about the Old House itself. It had stood empty so long, with broken windows and unlocked doors, that every child in the district had played there. The turnover for the first week had been between £70 and £80. Mrs Traill from the Primary had made a clearance of Daily Life in Ancient Britain, Mr Thornton bought a birdwatching book and the bank manager, rather unexpectedly, one on physical fitness. Mr Drury, the solicitor who was not Mr Thornton, and one of the doctors from Surgery, both bought books by former SAS men, who had been parachuted into Europe and greatly influenced the course of the war; they also placed orders for books by Allied commanders who poured scorn on the SAS men, and questioned their credentials. That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday, when rain set in, the local girls’ boarding school, out for a walk, had taken refuge in the shop, which was entirely filled, like a sheep-pen, with damp bodies closely pressed together and gently steaming. The girls turned over the greeting-cards, which had been grudgingly given a space next to the paperbacks, and bought three. Envelopes had to be found, and the till stuck when it was called upon to add 9½d., 6½d., and 3½d. On Thursday – which was early closing, but Florence decided to make her first week an exception – Deben appeared, to show that there were no hard feelings, and poked round, running his scrubbed hands over the fitments. He asked for a vocal score of the Messiah.

  ‘Do you want me to put that on order?’ she asked, trying for a friendly tone.

  ‘How long will that take to come?’

  ‘It’s rather hard to give a date. The publishers don’t like sending just one thing at a time. I have to wait to order until I’ve twelve titles or so from the same publisher.’

  ‘I’d have thought you would have had a thing like that in stock. Handel’s Messiah is sung every Christmas, you know, both in Norwich and at the Albert Hall, in London.’

  ‘It’s rather hard to keep everybody’s interests in mind when you only have room for a small stock.’

  ‘It’s not as though you had to depend on the day’s catch, though,’ said Deben. ‘There’s nothing here to deteriorate.’ He was still unable to find a purchaser for his shop.

  In the evenings she put up the shutters, got the orders away, cleared the correspondence on her old typewriter and read The Bookseller and Smith’s Trade News. Completely tired out by the time she went to bed, she no longer dreamed of the heron and the eel, or, so far as she knew, of anything else.

  Perhaps her battle to establish herself in the Old House was over, or perhaps she had been wrong in thinking that one had taken place, or would ever take place. But if she was not sure which of these alternatives she meant, the battle could hardly have been decisive.

  When the bookshop had been open for three weeks, General Gamart came in unobtrusively. With a sudden pang, she feared he was going to ask for the poems of Charles Sorley; but he, too, wanted the reminiscences of the former SAS man.

  ‘I’ve often felt like writing down something myself, now that I’ve got a certain amount of spare time. From the point of view of the infantry, you know – the chap who just walks forward and gets shot.’

  She wrapped his purchase carefully. She would have liked to have been instrumental in passing some law which would entail that he would never be unhappy again. But perhaps he ought not really to have been in the shop at all. He was there, at the very least, on sufferance. He glanced about him as though on parole, and retreated with his parcel.

  Jessie Welford’s sharp niece was somewhat surprised when she drove over for the first time to lend a hand with the books. The turnover was higher than she’d anticipated. There must have been quite a lot of interest in the new venture.

  ‘Shall we just have a look at the transactions?’ she asked, clicking her silver Eversharp, and using the tone which brought her employers to heel. ‘Three accounts have been opened – the Primary School and the two medical men. Where is your provision for bad debts?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve made any,’ said Mrs Green.

  ‘It ought to be 5% of what is due to you on the ledger. Then, the depreciation – that should be shown as a debit here, and as a credit in the property account. Every debit must have its credit. It is essential that you should be able to see at a glance, at any given time, exactly what you owe and what is owing to you. That is the object of properly kept books. You do want to know that, don’t you?’

  She guiltily wished she did. It often seemed to her that if she knew exactly what her financial position was down to the last three farthings, as Ivy Welford impressed upon her that she should, she would not have the courage to carry on for another day. She hardly liked to mention that she was thinking of opening a lending library.

  The weather had broadened into early summer. ‘There’s a delivery for you!’ Wally sang out from his bike, one foot resting on the pavement. ‘He asked the way twice, once at the gasworks, and once at the vicarage. Now he’s in trouble turning. He’s trying to reverse round in one go, do he’ll go straight through your backhouse.’

  In time to come this particular van, elegant in its red and cream paint, was to become one of the most familiar in Hardborough. It was from Brompton’s, the London store which offered a library service to provincial booksellers, no matter how remote. Summoned by Florence, it brought her first volumes and required her to sign an undertaking and to read the conditions laid down by Brompton’s.

>   These were suggestive of a moral philosophy, or the laws of an ideal state, rather than a business transaction. The books available on loan were divided into classes A, B, and C. A were much in demand, B acceptable, and C frankly old and unwanted. For every A she borrowed, she must take three Bs and a large number of Cs for her subscribers. If she paid more, she could get more As, but also, a mounting pile of Bs and the repellent Cs, and nothing new would be sent until the last consignment was returned.

  Brompton’s did not offer any suggestions as to how the subscribers were to be induced to take out the right book. Perhaps, in Knightsbridge, they had their own methods.

  When the opening of the lending library was announced, simply by a hand-written notice in the window, thirty of the inhabitants of Hardborough signed up on the first day. Mr Brundish could be considered a certainty. But while he had given no indication at all of what he would like to read, the other thirty were perfectly sure. Comfortably retired or prosperously in business, fond of looking at images of royalty, praisers of things past, they all wanted to have the recent Life of Queen Mary. This was in spite of the fact that most of them seemed to possess inner knowledge of the court – more, indeed, than the biographer. Mrs Drury said that the Queen Mother had not done all those embroideries herself, the difficult bits had been filled in for her by her ladies-in-waiting. Mr Keble said that we should not look upon her like again.

  Queen Mary was, of course, an A book. In point of time, Mrs Thornton had been the first to put it on her list; and Florence, confident in the justice of her method, placed the Thornton ticket in it. Every subscriber had a pink ticket, and the books were ranged alphabetically, waiting for collection. This was a grave weakness of the system. Everybody knew at a glance what everybody else had got. They should not have been poking about and turning things over in the painfully small space which had been cleared for the library, but they were unused to discipline.